STATE, THE PRIVATE SECTOR AND MODERN ART IN SOUTH AMERICA 1940-1943 by Olga Ulloa-Herrera A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of George Mason University in Partial Fulfillment of The Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Cultural Studies Committee: ___________________________________________ Director ___________________________________________ ___________________________________________ ___________________________________________ Program Director ___________________________________________ Dean, College of Humanities and Social Sciences Date: _____________________________________ Spring Semester 2014 George Mason University Fairfax, VA The U. State, the Private Sector and Modern Art in South America 1940-1943 A Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at George Mason University by Olga Ulloa-Herrera Master of Arts Louisiana State University, 1989 Director: Michele Greet, Associate Professor Cultural Studies Spring Semester 2014 George Mason University Fairfax, VA Copyright 2014 Olga Ulloa-Herrera All Rights Reserved ii DEDICATION This is dedicated to Carlos Herrera, Carlos A. Herrera, and Max Herrera with love and thanks for making life such an exhilarating adventure; and to María de los Angeles Torres with gratitude and appreciation. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express the deepest appreciation to my committee chair Dr.
Michele Greet and to my committee members Dr. Paul Smith and Dr. Ellen Wiley Todd whose help, support, and encouragement made this project possible. I have greatly benefited from their guidance as a student and as a researcher.
I also would like to acknowledge Dr. Roger Lancaster, director of the Cultural Studies Program at George Mason University and Michelle Carr for their assistance throughout the years. It would not have been possible to write this dissertation without the help, kindness and support of people around me, to only some of whom it is possible to mention here. Thanks to my peers and now colleagues for their friendship, help, comments, especially Rachel Delgado, Randa Kayyali, Pawin Malaiwong, Pia Møller, Katy Razzano, Tara Sheoran, Cecilia “Lia” Uy-‐Tioco, Victoria Watts, Fan Yang, and Nuh Yilmaz.
Much gratitude goes to Ludy Grandas for her unfailing moral support, advice, intellectual generosity and friendship. Special thanks to my professors Amal Amireh, the late Peter Brunette, Dina Copelman, Jean-‐ Paul Dumont, and Alison Landsberg. Along the way I have received the support from various colleagues. I am most grateful to Alejandro Anreus, Gilbert Cardenas, Melissa Carrillo, Eduardo Díaz, María Gaztambide, Jon Goldman, Tracy Grimm, Melissa Kroning, Jose Limón, Andrés Navia, Adriana Ospina, Mari Carmen Ramírez, Will Rochin, Victor Sorell, Ranald Woodaman, and Tomas Ybarra-‐Frausto.
My most sincere thanks to Maria de los Angeles Torres who has made many things possible including the completion of this project and to my cheering colleagues Luz Acosta and Cristina Correa. As an archival project, I am indebted to the staff of the Rockefeller Archive Center in particular Amy Fitch, the staff of the Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection at the University of Texas at Austin, the staff of the University of Chicago Special Collections Research Center, the staff at the OAS Columbus Memorial Library and Stella Villagrán, the staff of the Museum of Modern Art Archive, the staff of the National Archives at College Park and Adriana Ospina at the OAS Art Museum of the Americas Archives. I would like to thank my family for their endless love and support. I want to note the late Samuel D.
Eaton for making so many things possible for my family and me iv and for introducing me to the “Western Hemisphere Idea.” Above all I thank my husband Carlos and my sons Carlos and Roberto. Words cannot express how grateful I am for your love, support, inspiration and encouragement at every step of the way. And to Max who structured my writing days and made sure (for his very own selfish reasons) that I took breaks and exercise. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Page List of Abbreviations.
1 The Rebuilding of a U. Modern Industrial State and the Developing of a U. 37 Nineteen Thirty-Three: A New Modern Industrial Capitalist U. 38 Nineteen Thirty-Three: A Modern U.
44 Nineteen Thirty-Three: The U. State and Modern Art. 50 Nineteen Thirty-Three: The Global Stage and Modern Art. 55 Art and the State: Democracy.
58 A New State Narrative: Modern Art, Democracy, Museums and American Industry. 78 Towards a Definition of a Modern U. 89 Modern Art as a Strategy and Tool of National Defense: The Office for Coordination of Commercial and Cultural Relations between the American Republics and the Office of the Coordinator OF Inter-‐American Affairs, 1940-‐1943. 99 The OCCCRBAR Art Section and Modern Art in South America.
165 Commercial and Cultural Networks: South American Modern Art in the United States and the Field of Latin American Art. 264 The Art of Defense, The Defense of Art: Lincoln Kirstein and The Art Acquisition Trip to South America, 1942. 324 Modern Art: Cultural Flows and Networks. 438 vii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS Civil Works Administration.
CWA Elektricitäts-‐Gesellschaft Aktiengesellschaft. AEG Federal Emergency Relief Administration. FERA Foreign Direct Investment. FDI Franklin Delano Roosevelt .FDR International Business Machines Corporation.
IBM Multinational Corporations.MNCs The Museum of Modern Art .MoMA National Archives and Records Administration. NARA Office of Inter-‐American Affairs .OIAA Office of Strategic Services. OSS Office for Coordination of Commercial and Cultural Relations between the American Republics.OCCCRBAR Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs. CI-AA Office of War Information.OWI Organization of American States .OAS Pan American-‐Grace Company Airlines .Panagra Pan American Union.PAU Public Works of Art Project.
PWAP Sociedad Colombo-Alemana de Transporte Aéreo .SCADTA United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization .UNESCO United States Information Agency. USIA United States of America. Works Progress Administration.WPA Works Progress Administration Federal Art Project. WPA/FAP World War One.WWI World War Two.
WWII viii ABSTRACT THE U. STATE, THE PRIVATE SECTOR AND MODERN ART IN SOUTH AMERICA 1940-1943 Olga Ulloa-Herrera, Ph. George Mason University, 2014 Dissertation Director: Dr. Michele Greet This dissertation examines the role of modern art as a strategic tool of national defense during an unprecedented moment in U.
history in which the U. State and the private sector converged to develop an economic and cultural war preparedness program in South America. By taking modern art as a cultural object, this project studies the intersections of modernity, capitalism, power relations and culture by looking at the activities of the Art Section of the Office for Coordination of Commercial and Cultural Relations between the American Republics (OCCCRBAR) and its successor the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-‐American Affairs (CI-‐AA). The dissertation argues that the defense interventions of the United States in South America at this particular moment—with shifts in diplomacy, power, hegemony, and world order—laid out the foundation for a regionalization and industrial modernist infrastructure.
As such, these interventions established early cultural flows and networks of commerce, transportation, communication for an American ideology, ix cultural industries and visual culture later to be fully realized with the expansion of the Americanization of culture in contemporary globalization. x INTRODUCTION All too often the ‘Good Neighbor’ Policy is thought of as wholly a governmental program —Kenneth Holland1 The early 1940s witnessed an increased intra-‐cultural activity in the Western Hemisphere. Between 1940 and 1943 the United States engaged in a concerted and deliberate cultural defense effort to export what would become identified in later years as quintessential American values of democracy, modernization, progress and a meritocratic new American Dream way of life of economic prosperity and consumerism2 to countries in South America. Struggling to come out of an economic crisis of world proportions, these countries were now facing a new 1 Kenneth Holland, Director, Division of Science and Education, Office of the Coordinator of Inter-‐ American Affairs (CI-‐AA), to Mr.
Del Pozo on behalf of U. Vice President Henry A. NARA, Office of Inter-‐American Affairs, General Records, Central Files; Record Group 229, Box 365, Folder: Arts; National Archives at College Park, College Park, MD. 2The original term of the “American Dream” was defined and formulated by James Truslow Adams in 1931 during the Great Depression in the epilogue of The Epic of America, reflecting the economic and social conditions of the moment.
Adams perceived it to be "that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement. It is a difficult dream for the European upper classes to interpret adequately, and too many of us ourselves have grown weary and mistrustful of it. It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position." James Truslow Adams, The Epic of America, Boston: Little, Brown, and company, 1931, 214-‐215. As an evolving dream, however, in the context of the 1939-‐1940 the “American Dream” had naturally gone forward responding to improved economic and social conditions.
The new aspirations for the future reflected in the 1939 New York World Fair (Chapter 1), was a changed “American Dream” of a capitalist consumerist middle class, economic prosperity and a higher standard of living. 1 imminent threat of an expanding totalitarian ideology in a fast escalating European and soon to be global conflict. In this dissertation I critically examine the role of modern art as a strategic tool of national defense during an unprecedented moment in U. history in which the U.
private sector and the U. State converged for the first time in developing an economic and cultural defense program. Financed with state funds from the Military and Naval Appropriation Acts of 1941 and 1942 the program served as a new U. national security strategy and tool to carry out a U.
cultural and commercial penetration in South America during 1940-‐1943. I look at the circumstances and conditions by which interest on the part of the U. State and the U. private sector in modern art in South America during the early 1940s came into being.
Rather than from a diplomatic cultural foreign relations perspective, I explore the interest and intersections of art, culture, and commerce from an strategic and emergency point of view of national security and defense under conditions of war that sought to change dominant cultural values and cultural dynamics and patterns in a South America regional societal structure seen at the moment at high risk of being infiltrated and dominated by German, Italian, and Spanish totalitarian ideology and governance. In taking modern art as a cultural object, this project is guided by the overarching question of how modern art became a strategic tool for the U. State and the U. private sector during August 1940 to June 1943 in South America.
In looking at its production, identity, representation, regulation and consumption it 2 seeks to answer a set of sub-‐questions as follows: what was the role of modern art within a frame of economic and cultural relations under conditions of U. national security and defense?